By Sara:
Jane and I had the opportunity to go back to Irundu and teach at a conference for couples again in September. Last year, we taught about parenting and planning for your family. This year, we continued the theme of family by focusing on how to care for your family. The church chose the theme verse: 1 Timothy 5:8 - "Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."
We were very well taken care of by the church, in the guest room they have at the church office:
Every day, they cooked us more food than two people could possibly eat!
In our training, we talked about how, if we want to take care of our family, we need to begin with the foundation of our relationship with God. We make sure to have time for prayer, reading the Bible, and loving God, our Father. That love for God will then spill over into the way we treat our families. When we make time for God first, it will help us take better care of our families, who come next. We reviewed some of the points about the responsibilities of parents and talked about ways to relate well with your family members. Once you have prioritized your relationship with God and your family, we shared how you can then extend your time and energy to help other people.
Along the theme of caring for your family, we also did a training on chaya, since it is a nutritious food you can easily grow to provide food for and improve the health of your family. People were VERY excited to get chaya cuttings and to taste it for lunch since a few people received cuttings last year and the rest of the church heard about it. We hope to find chaya growing all over the place next time we visit!
The final topic we taught at the conference was one where we studied texts in the Bible about the healthy body of Christ. We discussed the characteristics of a healthy body and contrasted that with an unhealthy body. Then, as a group, we talked about how those same characteristics can fit with a healthy/unhealthy family. And we went into applications for how to build your family with the healthy characteristics, like unity, love, humility, service, and working together.
We heard a testimony from one of the men who had attended our training last year. He told us that his small children didn't really like him and his wife was super annoyed with him for neglecting the family, but because of last year's training, he started going home early to play with his kids, bringing them treats, and spending time with them. Now, his children like him and his relationship with his wife has improved!
On Sunday, I guided the church through a Bible study as an example of another way they can care for their family spiritually. I taught them a Bible study method they can use at home with their families and we made applications from the Bible passage which they can put into practice, in line with what we had been discussing throughout the conference that week.
We studied 1 John 4:19-5:5. This passage teaches us that the reason we can love is because God loved us first. And if we say we love God, we need to also love our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we don't love our brothers and sisters in Christ, it is evidence that we are not serious about loving God. As an application of what we learned, everyone made a plan for a specific way they can show love for one of their brothers and sisters in Christ this week. Some examples of plans people made include: inviting someone over for a meal, reconciling a broken relationship, and visiting a person who is sick.
Jane and I are very grateful for the opportunity the church gave us to teach and we are thankful for the ways God is working in the lives of the people we met there. We look forward to the next time they invite us back!
